Clinical practice and perspectives in neurosurgery using multi-modality functional imaging and monitoring

Abstract

Intraoperative electrophysiological monitoring became popular over time and is now indispensable for neurosurgical operations. Neuroimaging techniques such as functional MRI (fMRI) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) have recently become available in the clinical scene. We describe the clinical usefulness and pitfalls of the recent neuroimaging and electrophysiological techniques and emphasize the reliability of multi-modality integration to visualize the anatomical-functional relationships between lesions and eloquent brain areas. "Functional neuronavigation" with multi-modality integration is novel and useful for maximal resection of brain lesions, sparing the eloquent function and allowing the restoration of the damaged neuronal functions.